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You are here: Home / Archives for tapering

tapering

Things I have done in the last week

Zoey · September 25, 2015 · Leave a Comment

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In case you are living under a rock and haven’t noticed my incessant whining about it, I’m tapering.

For people who don’t know (sweet innocents!) it’s the part where you start to scale back on the amount of running to rest up your body to prepare for a race. And it makes people freaking crazy. I was explaining it to my husband the other day and he was asking ‘WHY? (there were probably more expletives in his head) Do you feel like you want to run more?’ And that’s really not it. I’m actually really enjoying the not running.

It’s the time that gets you. So. Much. More. Time. Time to think about how you aren’t ready. Time to think about phantom injuries which aren’t real but are totally plotting to kill you. Time to think about your racing strategy about five million times. Time to buy every running gadget known to man that serves no practical purpose whatsoever. There’s just way too much time.

And that’s what makes you crazy, not the lack of running.

So this week I have:

1) Bought absolutely ridiculous things that there is no way that I will ever need
2) Eaten pizza like it was a sandwich. Numerous times.
3) Had samosas for breakfast
4) Spent roughly five hours going over previous split times in other marathons
5) Changed the shoe that I’m going to run in. That seems like a good idea.
6) Checked the weather for the 18th. I’M SERIOUS.
7) Generally annoyed about 99.9% of the people who know me.

In what can only be considered perfect timing, I’m going away for the weekend. There will be more shopping and more eating, but hopefully slightly less obsessing and I can likely reduce my annoyingness by I think 60% at least.

See you Tuesday.

Tapering. Why is it a thing?!

OperationMove · August 15, 2014 · 5 Comments

I wrote this post when I had 5 more weeks until my first marathon. Which means I was staring down the barrel of a taper. And I’ll be honest I hadn’t done a full taper since my first half marathon a year before that. Because I do not like it. But it’s not negotiable with a marathon. With a half you can get away with a minimal taper, with a marathon? Not so much.

Burning questions that tend to arise on a taper include:

1) Why is everyone in the universe so irritating? And why do I have an urge to kill people?

2) Why do I resemble a human garbage can and why am I eating for a small nation?

3) Would we even really consider 15km to be a ‘long run’?! Really?!

4) Why do I sign up for races? Races are stupid.

5) Why do I suddenly have five million phantom injuries and the plague of death/cold/man flu?

Actual, scientific benefit of the taper

Unfortunately, the fact that I feel like I really want to go for more of a run doesn’t trump the fact that a good taper does the following things:

1) Bolster muscle power

2) Increase muscle glycogen

3) Aid muscle repair

4) Freshen the mind

5) Fine tune the neural network so it is working efficiently

6) Eliminate the risk of overtraining

7) Improve performance by 6-20%

DAMN YOU SCIENCE, DAMN YOU!!

 

 

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